From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2005-02-20 21:15:24 UTC
Subject: RE: meds in microwave
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <4426234.1108934124869.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
In recent years we have especially had it driven home to us with our extended human family how important following the cautions on any meds (prescription, over the counter, supplements truly is. An elderly couple managed to give themselves brain damage from improper use, one kept using a nightime cold med for too long and did severe permanent lung damage to himself, one gave herself anemia by megadosing some vitamins.
Scary things like that can happen to ferrets, too. All it takes is a glance through the archives of the FHL and FML to find cautions given, ferrets killed by over the counter meds (or by getting a human's prescription meds), some possible situations where herbals like licorice root may have caused or contributed to deaths or health problems such as thromboses (thorwn clots which can look like stroke if one goes to the brain or cause other problems when lodged in other locations), etc., or the potential problem that Pau d' Arco and chromium have with dropping blood sugar and how that can backfire with insulinoma*.
Medications of any type need to be treated with extreme respect and learned about. For those of us who are on-line that is especially easy but anyone can get the book resources and use the library and the help of the reference librarian.
I think we all get so used to the casual way meds are approached these days with advertisements and all that we forget that pretty much anything which is strong enough to help is also strong enough to harm if used wrong, stored wrong, prepared wrong, mixed with the wrong things or wrong conditions, etc.
*
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/browse.php?msg=SG12059
and
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/browse.php?msg=SG964